The Gratitude Gospel: Day 12
My husband is traveling for the week, which means one thing: my children have become savages.
Tag: Family
Assembling the Unknown
The Gratitude Gospel: Day 7
“Can we chat?”
It’s become a bedtime tradition in our home. Snuggles and conversation with Mom are how my children end their day.
Big Girl Bed
The Gratitude Gospel: Day 4
It was one of those bittersweet moments in parenthood – a sign that your child is growing more independent by the day.
This weekend our almost two-year-old daughter transitioned from a crib to a full bed. The déjà vu was hard to resist.
No Mosquito Bites
The Gratitude Gospel: Day 1
If you know me in real life, you’ve probably heard me complain about the mosquitoes at our short-term home. They eat the children alive, even with bug spray. We are lucky to escape a 20-minute outdoor adventure with less than 8 bites EACH.
Yesterday a trending weather pattern continued: rain. Frankly, I wanted to kick nature in the pants. So we hooded and booted up. No puddle was safe.
When You Can’t Push
I’m a bit of an agenda pusher. In college, for example, I saw marriage as my opportunity to no longer be scared in bed each night. For whatever reason, I feared the darkness.
That is, until I read a magazine article with the perfect antidote. It told me to call out one word three times: Jesus. It worked.
My husband and I will celebrate eight years of marriage this summer, and I must confess that when he travels, I still chase the invisible monsters away with a single name.
What’s harder, however, is quieting the other demons that persist in adulthood. The anxiety. The doubts. The dread of not knowing the future.
Quite simply, the walls we can’t easily push through.
Closing Time
Life has been full of goodbyes lately. And, you know, they never really get easier.
Today we part ways with our home – the first address that belonged to just us. The only home our children have ever known.
Wagging Goodbye
When my husband and I started dating, I was a single mother. A Yorkshire terrier puppy named Wharton had stolen my heart just two months prior.
In the midst of graduate school and multiple jobs, I think owning a dog gave me permission to be maternal. At 22, I was nowhere near ready to have children.
But I liked to think that one day it still might happen. A dog, I believed, would give me practice.
And, it’s true, I endured all of the frustrating stages required of little creatures.
Bladder control (often in the wee hours of morning).
Destruction of property.
Boundaries.
If I’m honest, I think my dog represented something even deeper: my fear of being alone.
You Can Do This
“You can do this.” It’s become a mantra in our relationship.
First, it was sweet encouragement my husband and I whispered to one another during our tenure in graduate school. Eventually, we walked across the stage – just minutes apart.
Next, it was yelled by my husband over intense labor pains. Truthfully, I thought our children might be stuck forever. Eventually, two little people entered the world.
And, just this weekend, I found myself mentally replaying the words.
For the first time, we trusted a non-grandparent caregiver to put both children to bed.
We’ve forgotten how to use our hands
My father’s hands were always calloused – filthy from the day’s work. His meal ticket wasn’t a college degree but back-breaking labor. In all of my life, I have never seen anyone work harder.
Which is why he readily accepts projects during visits to our home. This past December he removed rotten wood and adhesive from our front steps and completely replaced our laundry room flooring. In the process, he ruined a well-used long-sleeved T-shirt with Virginia Tech, my alma mater, written across it.
My father’s four-year plan ended prematurely, and he didn’t finish college.
Why You’ll Become That Parent
You know, the parent who annoys you before you have children…or before you have as many kids as they do. In your eyes, they get it all wrong.
How could they do that?
Why don’t they just do this?
I’ll never…
For myself, I can chase personal guilt back to an observation of “failed” discipline at a nice restaurant early in my first pregnancy. The scene was Silicon Valley, and the parents were older (a cultural norm in the Bay Area). They have no control, I remember thinking to myself. Their unwillingness to face the little giant in the high chair really got under my skin. Before you have children, you can really believe you have all the answers.
But if you are a parent long enough, a realization will stop you in your tracks. In my case, I had to accept an uncomfortable reality: my kids are their own people. They won’t always behave at dinner – no matter how much money or effort you expend.
And, in due time, I did that thing I said I never would.
I learned to let little things go.
